BOOK REVIEWS. 
463 
upon them. The result, as with all the author's books, is a refreshing 
outlook to his subject and a just appreciation of the place the botany 
course should occupy in various kinds of education. Its bearing 
towards the actions and thoughts of mankind is the place it should 
occupy, as the author well points out, in the general college course, and 
the relative importance to be attached to the different aspects of the 
science differs according to whether it is intended as part of a general 
training, or in preparation for a professional career, or as an aid in 
realizing the inwardness of an applied science like horticulture. 
Too often, in both the first and the last types of botanical course, 
the student is overburdened by details dealing with exceptional 
instances and curious facts of limited application, instead of having 
almost the whole of his attention directed to the establishment of the 
broader principles of the science by means of well-directed laboratory 
courses. In our opinion the author has done well to direct his teaching 
into the line it follows in this book, and we can confidently recommend 
it to the attention of those whose business it is to conduct similar 
courses on this side of the Atlantic. 
Form and function are the twin themes of the present volume, and 
this is to be followed by another dealing with the kinds and relation- 
ships of plants, to be published separately and also bound up with 
the present volume. 
The completeness and method which characterize the book may be 
indicated by a list of the sections of the chapter on the morphology 
and physiology of leaves : — The distinctive characteristics of leaves 
(2 pp.) ; the structure of leaves (2 pp.) ; the synthesis of food by light 
in leaves (9 pp.) ; the cellular anatomy of leaves (7 pp.) ; the water- 
loss, or transpiration, from plants (9 pp.) ; the adjustments of green 
tissues to light (6 pp.) ; the various forms of foliage leaves (14 pp.) ; 
the forms and functions of leaves other than foliage (10 pp.) ; the 
nutrition of plants which lack chlorophyll (6 pp.) ; the autumnal 
and other coloration of leaves (6 pp.) ; the economics, and treatment 
in cultivation, of leaves (3 pp.) ; the uses of photosynthetic food 
(16 pp.). 
No fewer than 274 illustrations illuminate the pages of this ex- 
cellent manual, and not a few represent ingenious pieces of apparatus, 
often of the author's devising, for demonstrating some of the facts of 
vegetable physiology of cardinal importance. 
" Fruit Growing for Amateurs." By H. H. Thomas. 8vo. 
152 pp. (Cassell, London, 1916.) 15. net. 
A very useful little book for the class of readers for whom it was 
written, dealing as it does with all kinds of hardy fruits usually grown 
in this country and with vines and melons. Bottling fruits, winter 
washes for fruit trees, insect pests, fungus diseases, are one and all 
briefly .dealt with. In our opinion it is a pity the ' Lowberry ' is 
recommended on p. 81, as we have never seen it a success in the open 
air, i.e. never cropping well. Again, one would imagine from its 
